Escaping Mr Right

by Avril Tremayne

  ‘Want to know what I did?’ Not that I intended to wait for his answer because I suspected it would be ‘no’. ‘I ate them for dinner on the third day, and then I went to the bathroom and vomited them straight back up.’

  ‘What’s your point, Chloe?’

  ‘You kept serving me up plates of tomatoes. Ultimatums. I kept having to choose, whether I was ready to or not. You had a year to think about me, yet you gave me less than a week to think about you. And I … I vomited.’ Okay – not the nicest analogy, but he had thrown that used condom in his shoe, so I knew he could take a certain degree of grossness.

  ‘So it’s my fault?’ he asked, a little too outraged for me to mistake his attitude for poor-little-foster-girl sympathy. ‘What you did? My fault?’

  ‘No, but you know my temper. What did you think I was going to do when I found out you and Marcus had been trading me?’ And okay, both of us were raising our voices unnecessarily by then.

  The next second, he was pulling over to the side of the road, screeching to a halt, turning to me. ‘And what did you think I was going to do? Do you think it didn’t bother me, wanting you the way I did, knowing what I knew? I kept trying to get you to open your eyes and see him but you wouldn’t. A year, you had together, and yet you’re telling me it was my job to out him? Once he actually got up the guts to come out to me, do you think, do you really think, I should have come running to you to blab? Was that the only way to get you, by throwing him under a bus? I can only imagine what you would have thought of me for doing that. A friend doesn’t tell another friend’s secrets. I thought you, of all people, would get that.’

  ‘That’s the whole point! Loyalty and … and fairness. The minute, the second, I kissed you, I called him to tell him. Why couldn’t he have done the same thing, the minute he knew he could never want me that way? It’s not about being gay, you idiot. I don’t care if Marcus is gay. Bring it on, bring it right on! He could have told me anything – he didn’t love me, he’d met someone else, he was giving up sex, whatever he wanted – as long as he set me free when he knew he could never want me.’

  ‘That still doesn’t make it my fault. Do you remember, what I told you, that night we kissed? I’d sat there, in Evie’s apartment, watching him not want you all fucking night, when I would have killed to have you. And you ripped into me because he left you for me to drive home. I said to you, It’s not my fault Marcus isn’t giving you what you want, but if you tell me what you do want, I’ll give it to you. And I would have. I would have given you anything.’

  His hand came down, bang, on the steering wheel, making me jump. ‘It wasn’t my fault, Chloe. But you’ve blamed me all the way along. Not looking too hard at what was up with Marcus, because you wanted the illusion, that fucking illusion of perfection, but not telling me what you wanted either. Instead, I had to guess and hope and try, and you kept punishing me every time I got it wrong. Why? Why did you keep punishing me?’

  ‘Because I thought – I thought – Oh, God.’ I stopped, because my breath was hitching and I could feel those bloody, bloody tears building.

  Nick shook his head, disgusted at my inability to tell him even then. He went to re-start the truck, and I reached over and grabbed his wrist to stop him. This was it. Last chance. ‘Because I could, Nick,’ I said. ‘Because I could. You let me, so I did it, because I thought – I thought you would somehow still want me. Every bad-tempered inch of me, you once said. The black swan.’ I covered my face with my hands as the tears shook me. ‘Because I could.’

  ‘But when does it stop, Chloe? When do your black and white swans figure out they want the same thing?’ he asked tiredly, and his hand was there, in my hair, just for a moment, giving me hope. ‘When do I get my turn? To know that you’ll want me, no matter what? I thought we were there. That last night … I thought we were there, but we weren’t, were we? Not if you could do that to me one night later.’

  I dropped my hands, looked across at him, blinking the tears away. My bottom lip was trembling, but I caught it between my teeth and controlled it. Something about his voice told me I needed to hear what was coming in all its unadorned glory, like it or not.

  Nick brushed at my tears, smiling so sadly I almost couldn’t breathe. ‘Chloe, I never made a secret of how I felt about you, not since day one. Everything – everything – I saw that night, I wanted. The way you looked, obviously. You’re so beautiful to me. Icy eyes, fiery hair. Hot and cool on the inside too. Tough, but not. Slipping money to a homeless guy, and then getting snippy about it when you’re caught out. I admired the way you stuck up for Ruby, crazy though that sounds. It was the first time I saw myself the way you saw me, like a heartless, whoring bastard, and I admit I deserved every name you called me, and a few more I called myself. But most of all, I wanted the girl who punched me when I tried to entice her away from her date. You weren’t going anywhere with a guy who’d ditch his date the way I did, and you weren’t ditching Marcus, not for anything, and certainly not for a guy like me. I loved that. I wanted that. For me. All of it, for me. The clear-eyed way you chose a side and just … stuck there, because it was right, and people deserved that respect.’

  ‘Then I don’t understand the problem.’

  ‘The problem is you didn’t stick to me. It took you a year to kiss me, Chloe; it took you less than one lousy week to kiss Bryce. And I just can’t live knowing you’re going to choose someone else.’

  ‘But we were mating for life. Swans, wolves, eagles, us.’

  He re-started the truck, pulled erratically out onto the road. ‘Ah, but there’s a built-in loophole, Chloe. When one dies, the other can go on and find a new mate.’

  ‘But we’re both still –’

  ‘I’m as good as dead, Chloe.’

  ‘Let me prove that you’re not.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I dare you,’ I said, trying his own tactic. ‘Pull over again and kiss me. And if you still say you don’t want me, I’ll believe it.’

  ‘But I do want you, Chloe. Sometimes, however, we have to give up, even when we want something so badly it’s like a dark ache.’ He smiled, looking infuriatingly, disgustingly brave and romantic, as he said those words I never, ever wanted to hear again. ‘So I’m going to say this now, because I want it off my chest, and then we’ll let it go. I love you. And don’t say it back.’ Because I’d opened my mouth to blurt it all out. ‘Just don’t, Chloe. I don’t want to hear you say it. You play it too safe to be in love the way I am. You crave perfection, and I’m not perfect – as I told you, and told you and told you. I screwed up on the Marcus thing, but I’d already told you I’d do whatever I had to do to get you. It just happened to be a shitty thing to do and I knew it all along. But it doesn’t change the fact that I did it. I’d probably do it all over again. In other words, I am not white swan material. I’ll wear that. Now, please, can you wear what you did to me?’

  He pulled into the kerb and stopped with a jerk of the handbrake. ‘And on that note, thank God we’re here.’ He pointed to the right. ‘See that blue door? Through there and you’ll be safe.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m not your concern.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘If you die, I’ll never forgive you.’

  ‘Well, we’re racking up all those things we won’t forgive, so just add it to the tally.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Back to the orphanage.’

  ‘What happens if the buildings are destroyed in the typhoon?’

  He looked at me like I was talking gibberish. ‘Then we rebuild.’

  ‘So … you’ll give me up, but not a building?’

  ‘I didn’t give you up. You chose.’

  ‘And now you’re choosing. You are such a damn hypocrite. So I kissed your brother. I didn’t enjoy it, you know. And he certainly didn’t. And that’s what you choose not to get over? That? The Nick I want wouldn’t say
sayonara, have a nice life, because I made one mistake. The Nick I want would fight for me, and let me tell him that I will never, ever touch another guy. The Nick I want is not some pathetic one-strike-and-you’re-out bastard, not when he knows how important it is to me, to be so … so … Oh God, forget it. This whole thing is pathetic. You’re pathetic.’

  ‘Chloe …’ Warning.

  ‘Don’t “Chloe” me, you coward,’ I shouted at him. ‘All this talk about wanting me and waiting for me forever is all very well, but as we’ve said a time or two, words are cheap. What you’re really doing is passing me on, just like every other person in my life has done because I’m too much trouble. Well, here’s some news for you – I can live with “no” just like you can. And next time you take one of your groupies to bed, you think about all that bullshit you fed me about taking the black, the white, they grey, the whatever-the-fuck swan. I will move on, and I won’t pick a guy who gives up at the drop of a hat. And meanwhile? Well, you can kiss my arse!’

  I reached for the door handle but before I could get it open, Nick was there. Hello, eat your heart out, Usain Bolt. That’s how fast he was. Wrenching open my door, unbuckling my seat belt, shoving me across the bench seat and somehow managing to yank me back at the same time until my legs were out of the truck and he was between them.

  The wind was raging, the rain pelting his head, his back, my dangling legs.

  ‘Do you really want me to kiss your arse, Chloe?’ he demanded. ‘Do you? Do you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and raised a trembling hand to touch his cheek. ‘I want you to kiss any part of me you want.’

  He jerked his face away from my hand, and somehow turned me so I was flat on the seat, on my stomach. My jeans were wrenched down, my underwear, torn off. Not joking – eighty dollars’ worth of powder blue lace ripped and removed – wooshka! And I didn’t give a good goddamn.

  He bit, then kissed, then licked the left cheek of my bottom, then the right. I could hear him breathing, so ragged each dragged-in piece of air was like a cry. One rough shove, and my legs were as spread as much as my bunched jeans would allow. Almost before I could compute that, his tongue speared inside me. Once, twice, three times. Then his fingers were there too, rubbing that favourite place of his, thumb and forefinger rolling, rolling. The wildness of the weather, the sensations he was building in me, the fact that it was him … everything felt feral, elemental, exciting beyond belief. A breath, a groan, and his mouth replaced his fingers, sucking, kissing, licking. And I was coming and crying and calling his name.

  But almost before the last spasm rolled through me, he was tugging up my jeans, dragging me out of the truck and back into the rain. ‘Wet enough for you?’ he asked –a loud, grotesque facsimile of my opening conversational gambit about the weather.

  The rain was everywhere, drenching, slapping, suffocating. I realised I was shaking – emotion, reaction, despair – and wrapped my arms around myself to try to stop it. ‘W–What was that, Nick?’ For a moment, I thought he wasn’t going to answer me, that he hadn’t even heard me over the roar of the wind and his own heaving breaths. ‘Nick?’

  He breathed in, shoved two hands into his sodden hair, breathed out. His face had gone blank, his eyes shuttered. ‘That was me kissing your arse, Chloe.’ He smiled – wolf-like. ‘Now, you think about that when you move on to that guy who doesn’t give up at the drop of a fucking hat. And meanwhile, consider yourself kissed goodbye. That’s how my kind – animal-beast-pig-bastards – do it. Worthy of the Discovery Channel. This hyena has eaten its last zebra.’

  What could I do? Shaking like a leaf, in shock, drenched, heartsick, I made my struggling way through the wind, towards the shelter. Hand on the door, I let myself turn back, heedless of the rain that was mixing with my horrible tears.

  The rain that didn’t quite block the sight of Nick, back in the truck, slumped over the steering wheel, his head on his arms. His shoulders were shaking.

  He was crying.

  And my broken heart shattered.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ‘What the fuck happened to your hair?’

  That was Drew, two days after I landed in Sydney, as I stepped into Jack and Evie’s apartment for my birthday dinner and was passed around the three of them for a kiss.

  I shrugged. ‘You told me a pixie cut was real break-up hair. And on the subject of break ups, Andrew, you might have mentioned you’d given Reynold his conge. And welcome home, Jack, by the way.’

  ‘Conge?’ Drew asked. ‘How sophisticated.’

  ‘Reynold is heartbroken, in case you’re interested,’ I said. ‘I’m more interested in what made you go the full chop,’ Drew said.

  I tossed my … head. ‘I broke up.’

  ‘Yeaaah, I recall that warranting a fringe and six inches.’

  ‘It did, when I broke up with Marcus. But now I’ve broken up with Nick.’

  ‘Okaaaay,’ Evie said, and I gave her such a gimlet eye. ‘Well you’ve only been gone eleven days, so that’s quick work!’ she said.

  ‘Actually, the affair itself was six and a half days,’ I said, for the sake of accuracy. ‘It was pre-typhoon.’

  ‘And how does a mere six-point-five day affair warrant a pixie cut?’ Evie asked.

  ‘Let’s just say it was an intense six-point-five days,’ I said. ‘Actually, the whole eleven days was intense.’

  Talk about understatement! My whole life had changed in those eleven days. I’d been through two typhoons – a physical one and an emotional one. I’d done some of my best work – one feel-good story and one natural disaster. I’d been up close and personal with children, not only at the playground, but also recording their stories on my phone in the shelter as a solo operator, like the grown-up professional I was supposed to be instead of the basket case I’d been up until that point. I’d discovered I didn’t have to be the old Chloe or the new one, that if I happened to be both Chloes, the world wouldn’t stop turning. I’d learned what it was to be wanted, really wanted, to the edge of madness, and that that was exactly how I liked it. I’d fallen in love … then thrown it away because I’d learned that lesson too late.

  Did it show, I wondered, when Jack looked searchingly at me as he handed me a drink?

  ‘What is it, Jack?’

  ‘I just like the haircut.’

  I laughed, as I looked into my glass. A good old martini, which had started it all. Well, what the hell, I thought. Make me maudlin, open my legs, who cares? It’s my birthday – a date nobody except these three had ever bothered to celebrate. Why not?

  I looked up at Jack. ‘I’m glad,’ I said. ‘But if you really think that scant few inches of gin is going to drag out the details of my disastrous love affair, you have a lot to learn.’

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ Jack said, and remedied the drink situation by topping me up from the ever-present cocktail shaker.

  ‘Well,’ Drew said, almost rubbing his hands in anticipatory glee, ‘I think my birthday present is going to come in very handy given all the intensity that is buzzing around the room. Come on, let’s open presents before dinner.’

  So we settled in the living room, and as I sank into that gorgeous coffee-coloured semi-circular couch, I was moved to confess, ‘You know, I really don’t like my couch.’

  ‘He-llo!’ Drew said, ‘Nobody does. It’s death to the coccyx, that couch of yours. I prefer Evie’s lumpy old black corduroy number to your cream leather confection.’

  ‘Hey,’ Evie protested.

  ‘Hey yourself,’ Drew said. ‘I see that you haven’t transported that monstrosity to the penthouse.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to let her,’ Jack said, and twirled one of her ringlets.

  All three of us looked at him – and in unison, burst out laughing.

  ‘What?’ Jack asked, but a smile was lurking.

  ‘You let Evie do whatever she wants,’ I said.

  ‘Well … yeah!’ Jack said, and dragged Evie in for a lingering kiss.

  Bl
ink, blink, breathe. Recalling Nick dragging me into his arms as though he’d protect me from the universe. Just like Jack did with Evie.

  Drew came to sit beside me and clasped my hand tightly. ‘Bleeding all over the floor, darling?’

  ‘Yes, although as it turns out, that guilty conscience you were so worried about was trumped by something much more painful,’ I said. ‘Tell me, Drew, did you know? About Marcus being gay? You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘I didn’t know, but I guessed. That night when we were all here, there was just … something.’

  ‘Well, can you tune up your gaydar before I land a new guy?’ I asked. ‘It will save me a sexless three months at the very least.’

  Laughing, he pulled me in for a hug. ‘Open those presents.’ And then to the canoodling Jack and Evie, ‘Oi, you two. Presents. And not that godawful scarf Evie bought her.’

  ‘Hey!’ Evie again.

  ‘Well for God’s sake, Jack.’ Drew. ‘Can’t you get her a stylist?’ Without waiting for an answer, he gestured to the two wrapped gifts on the coffee table. ‘Mine are much more interesting. Therapy, almost.’

  I reached for the first one, and started laughing as I uncovered my very own Vibrating Rock Chick. ‘I’m not sure about the purple,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why, but I thought it would be flesh-coloured.’

  ‘Just use it with pride,’ Drew said.

  Halfway through unwrapping the second present, I started laughing again. Two Ken dolls emerged. One dark haired, one red-haired. Well, sort of red-haired.

  ‘So you already knew about me and Nick before tonight?’ I said, smoothing my finger over dark-haired Ken’s head. ‘Who told you?’

  ‘I cannot reveal my sources,’ Drew said. ‘The journalistic code.’

  ‘Hmph. I don’t trust you,’ I said, but really, I couldn’t get up the energy to interrogate him.

  He nodded, looking sage. ‘Very wise.’

  Jack had picked up the other doll. ‘Where did you find a red-haired Ken?’